"I got a hit in the nuts horror story for the ages. When I was around 15 years old, I was at the park playing basketball when I did a no look bullet pass into the post. My teammate wasn't ready for it so it went out of bound with a crazy amount of velocity right into the crotch of some poor sap who was sitting on a bench hanging out with what I'm guessing was his girlfriend. He immediately falls to the ground shrieking and crying. I walked over to apologize and see if he was alright, when I suddenly see blood stains on his jeans around his crotch. I started freaking out asking what happened when his girlfriend yelled at me, "He just got circumcised a couple of days ago!" The guy's probably alright now but I still feel guilty that I might have inadvertently ruined some young man's genitalia."

If you were able to read that gruesome story without at least wincing, then I'm pretty sure you don't have a penis. Which, for the time-being, makes you one of the lucky ones. [shudders] Anyway, it got me to thinking about weird basketball injury stories. I'm not talking about the standard sprains, strains, pulls, bruises, cuts, etc. I'm talking strange stuff. Here's the story of my oddest basketball-related boo-boo.

Several years ago, I was playing pickup ball with a few friends at Lifetime Fitness late on a Sunday evening. Now, I had received two early warnings that strange things were afoot that night. First, a buddy of mine who cannot hit from the outside beat me in a game of 21 -- for the first and only time ever -- by shooting all threes. (I continued to give him the green light, of course, because I refused to believe he'd keep knocking them down.) Second, some very eccentric characters showed up and asked us to go full court, including one guy who was playing without shoes or socks. (Who plays basketball while barefoot? Seriously?) I ignored Fate's warnings, though, and paid for it dearly. On the first possession of the first full court game, I collapsed into the paint to help out on a guard who had beaten his man off the dribble, but the guy flailed his off arm and whacked me in the face. It was a stinging blow, and I was momentarily stunned. I grabbed my mouth, where he'd hit me, and bowed my head slightly...and blood started gushing onto the court.

My buddies, who know me a little too well, assumed I'd just keep playing. (I have a history of playing through some rather grievous injuries.) But the blood was freaking me out -- I mean, there was a lot of it -- so I stumbled out of the gym and toward the locker room to check things out. I bumped into another one of my friends on the way, and when he asked what was wrong I removed my hand to show him the wound. I asked how bad it was, and he said, "Uh...was it hanging down like that before?" It? Hanging?! As cryptic and somewhat alarming comments go, that one was right up there. So I started freaking out a little.

In the locker room, I wiped some of the blood off my face with a paper towel -- I know, really sterile of me -- and inspected the damage. It was worse than I'd imagined. The corner of my mouth where my upper and lower lips meet had split and was just gaping open. It wasn't the force of the blow that had done it; the hit had driven the flesh into my incisor, which had done the job that nature created it for: To cut and slice. My very first thought was: "Oh shit! I'm...I'm deformed!" It looked that grisly.

Pressing a huge wad of paper towels against the wound, I shuffled to my car and drove myself to the nearest emergency room I could think of. It was empty when I got there, but they made me wait for over an hour anyway. I guess people were dying in the back or something. While waiting, I asked the nurse on duty for a butterfly bandage or maybe some gauze, but she said they didn't have any. How a hospital doesn't have these things is beyond me. (My suspicion is that she simply didn't know where they were or didn't want to have to stand up and, you know, do actual work.)

The good news was that, once I got to see the doctor, he assured me that he could stitch everything back together and that the scarring would occur inside my mouth, so no one would ever see it. Whew. There were some downsides, though. For one, it took him so long to return after shooting me up with anesthetic -- about an hour and a half -- that the anesthetic had actually worn off a little bit by the time he started working on me. Let me tell you, that did not feel good, but it was almost 3 a.m. by this point and I was sick of waiting. The other crappy part of the whole deal was that he had to sew half of my mouth shut...and it had to stay that way for no less than a week and a half.

Having half of my mouth sewn shut really sucked. I know that sounds rather obvious, but allow me to expound. First, I was only able to eat things I could suck through a straw. That meant I was on a liquid diet for about two weeks. Liquid diets get a little boring after about, oh, half of one meal. They also leave you weak and constantly hungry. Second, I couldn't talk. Well, I could, but everything I said sounded like, "Errr, errr, errrgh." But the real bummer was that the very next Saturday was my dating anniversary with my then-girlfriend. We had reserved a fancy hotel room and pre-ordered some really nice room service food, complete with hors d'oeuvres and cake. But I couldn't eat. And I couldn't kiss. And the area of my mouth that was stitched shut was rubbing against my teeth, which caused several canker sores to form on the wound...so let's just say I wasn't exactly filled with passion and romance. Worst date ever? Pretty close, yeah.

Okay. I've spilled my guts. Now you, dear readers, must post some of your freaky basketball injury stories. I'll add the good ones to this post.

I used to announce for my university's women's team's games, so I got to know the players pretty well. We had this one PG who would play through anything. In this one game she drove the hoop, lost her footing and hit the ground. She just started SHRIEKING and holding her elbow. It looked like a pretty basic fall, so I didn't know what had happened. She wound up having to be stretchered off, alternately crying and moaning.

We found out later she had completely dislocated her elbow, to the point that it had almost done a 180.

When I was a senior in high school, I was watching one of the games at my school's Christmas tournament. There was one of those unusual sequences at midcourt where there's a steal, then the ball is stolen right back. Well, after the second steal, someone tipped the ball out from behind and it went right in to someone's knee. The forward momentum of the knee combined with the speed of the ball caused a richochet in to the crowd. Not so much the crowd though. More like s waterboy's face. His nose instantly started bleeding and was broken. That remains to this day the single greatest play I've ever seen.

I was playing at my house's b-ball net with my brother and then while 1 cm of my tounge was in between my top anf bottom teeth at that split-second moment, my bro hit the bottom jaw and launched the bottom teeth into the tongue. Frick!!! I thought I just lost the the tip of my tongue, but I fortunately only couldn't feel that part of the tongue, but it was still bleeding like crazy, and this occured right before dinner, and I was hungry as hell and couldn't eat. The next day I had a brown-purple tongue tip and shown it to my friends and made them puke.

When I was in 8th grade, I stood in to take a charge. When I fell, I broke my arm in two spots. I was called for a block and because I was writhing around in pain, the ref thought that I was showing him up so I got T'ed. I guess he couldn't tell the difference between a 14 year old complaining and one that was in obvious pain.

That;s funny. This summer I was drunk at a party and one thing led to another and I go punched in the face with brass knuckled which led to my upper lip hanging in the corner (almost exactly like how you described your injury) the beauty of this story is...I live in Canada. So my friend drove me to the ER where I presented my 'get out of jail free card' aka. health Card. I got looked after in 2 minutes because the nurse thought I was puking blood (red jello shooters) and I got a sweet scar and even sweeter drugs out of all of it.

once i was on a fast break with a good friend of mine, who was playing for the other team, coming in hard for a foul. so as i approached the rim, instead of jumping into the hit and missing the shot, i stopped on a dime and tucked as my friend went sailing over me in full leap. he ended up flipping and breaking his tailbone on the court, forever leaving him with a rather akward and funny way of running.

Well, in the weird factor, I remember playing in a church and walking into the hall to put my basketball shoes on (Now i always wear the shoes before I go to the gym) As I was walking I felt a sting. It didn't really hurt to bad, So I took off my sock and noticed that I had small pinprick of blood on my right foot. I wiped it off and assumed that I had stepped on something sharp, but all I could see on the ground was a broken off piece of needle. So I wiped the blood off, put on my shoes and went to play. My foot started really hurting me after trying to run down the court twice so I decided to go to the doctor to get it checked out. He did an x-ray and a local anesthetic and revealed a 3 inch broken off needle lodged in my foot. They gave me some anesthetic and then went in with what looked like some surgical plyers and wrenched that bad boy out. Off course the anesthetic was only for the top area, and though I didn't hardly feel it at all going in. I really felt it coming out.

I was walking backwards talking to the fellas as we headed for the gym on this navy base one time. Now even though I had seen the antique parked car with the big flared Batmobile-esque pointy fins in the driveway from several yars back, and had made a mental note of it, that didn't keep me from turning around at the last instant and lodging one of the pointed ends right into my "crocthal" region. My boys said they didn't warn me because they knew I had seen the car there and thought I was simply about to sidestep the fin. I was bent over in agony. Still played that morning, albeit quite poorly.

A teammate of mine was knocked unconscious once when he went over a guys back in an attempt to block a fastbreak layup. He basically rode the shooter's body and momentum so far past the baseline that it carried him too close to the edge of a court-side stage, on which he struck his head.

My Achilles tendon popped as I turned to go for a completely unabated rebound in a league game back in '97. I knew what had happened immediately as I headed for the floor because I had heard from other victims that it felt like somebody stepped on the back of their shoe but when they looked back there was nobody there.

I have this friend who was notorious for his "scorched earth" tactics back in our playing days. One game he grabbed a rebound, turned sharply with his elbows out looking to pass the outlet. Unfortunately our rookie PG was standing right next to him and got hit by the elbow square in the mouth, and was knocked out cold. The hit was actually so hard that the PG's teeth ripped through the skin just undir his lower lips and left a teeth-mark on my friends elbow.

In another game he tried to intercept a long pass to the opponents PG. I didn’t actually see what happened when they both jumped up in the air after the ball but all I heard was this big loud *THUMP*. I looked back at them and there was the PG flat on the floor with my friend standing over him with the ball in his hands. Normally this wouldn’t be a big deal but it was soon clear that the PG wasn’t all there anymore. Actually he didn’t know who he was or where he was. They tried to tell him that he was Jason Kidd, but then he lost a step and couldn’t shoot anymore so they sent him home. He ended up having two black eyes and a headache for a week.

This last on wasn’t actually an bad injury but a while back I played with a guy who had lost half of one of his fingers in an accident some years before. In one game we were playing the refeere notices blood on the floor so he stops the game and sends both teams to the bench. While the blood is being cleaned of he walks to us and asks whether one of us is bleeding. As it turns out this guy had received a deep cut on his half-a-finger so he shoves his blood soaked hand to the refeeres face and says angrily “YES, ME!” The referee turns white as snow and bables out “Y…y..you lost the whole finger?” At the time we were loosing badly so we refused to continue the game until the other team returned the severed finger.

Playing a Friday night game in Glasgow, Scotland, I gracefully dove/tripped over my own feet for a loose ball, and with my hands outstretched, used my face to break the fall. A teammate helped me up, offering words of sympathy and encouragement. "Get up. You're getting blood all over the court."

I hustled to the bathroom, resorted to the oh-so-hygienic bathroom paper towels, and looked in the mirror to check the damage to my lip. Of course, then comes a small Scottish boy. Carrying my tooth. "My mom says you should put this in milk and get to a hospital." Sure enough, there was a gap were the tooth had been, and another hanging by a hinge. Yes, teeth can hang by a hinge. Who knew.

Alas, I was not given any fun drugs, nor were they able to save the teeth. But there's some crazy stuff in a Glasgow hospital on a Friday night. A guy came in with a knife...sticking of the back of his head.

I was playing pickup ball with some friends last spring when I got on a one-on-one fast break. I crossed over and the defender kind of stumbled. When I went up for the layup, I had to sort of jump around him, just as he was getting back into a normal stance. His shoulder pushed against my foot and sent me much higher, and I banged my head on the bottom of the backboard. I fell to the court and they picked me up and drove me to the hospital because my forehead was split wide open. I got some stitches and a pretty bad concussion, and the blood stain is still on the court. The story is always a bunch more fun than the experience.

One time some guy tried to pull a nice And1 style move on me, but instead of throwing the ball between my legs, they threw the ball right into the crotch. Needless to say, when I see NBA players execute a between the legs pass, I wince. I don't really care for that move.

Another tooth story, at practice many years ago, only a few people showed up so we just played 3 on 3. We started getting too loose, throwing alleyoops and going for hard drives, which usually comes before injuries. So, I was on the baseline, a little bit too far behind the backboard for a clean shot, but threw up a shot fake anyway. Of course, by now we were all playing very competitively, and my defender took the bait and tried to monster-swat my shot. Being cheeky, I tried to make a 3 point-play and took hard contact. Our heads collided, and my defender seemed to be worse-off. I went to check if he was okay, but the others were all looking at me. Blood was dripping out of my head. The bastard bit me! I got driven to the hospital, and much like Bawful, I had to wait four hours. I was forced to watch Formula 1 racing until I couldn't stand it anymore, and I drove into town to buy dinner. Healthcare might be free in New Zealand, but not speedy. Or advanced. The doctor told me that he could give me drugs and stitches, but since I have long hair, he decided to instead tie the hair around the wound into a knot. By now, my hair was of caked in dry blood, and the sweet-jesus-in-a-bucket it hurt.

I'm going to tell you about a baseball injury sustained by one unfortunate catcher in a schoolyard baseball game rather than a basketball blooper. One would like to assume I was a wee bit hyped up due to my competitive nature and all, at least that's my story and I'm sticking to it. Short story short; I was at bat and after swinging valiantly and making contact with what was surely single material, I released the bat and made way to first base. Upon reaching said base, I glanced back at home plate for some uknown reason and noticed the catcher lying on the ground in agony, surrounded by some of the other kids.

Well, apparently when I 'released' the bat, in reality the bat got launched directly into his cranium. Oops!

Wow, I fell like my story pales in comparison to all these, but here goes...

I had made a pass off the wing to the top of the arc and was cutting to the opposite post with the intent of setting a screen. My defender was quicker than I was so I knew I wouldn't have a step and didn't expect the ball. My teammate/buddy Brad, however, figured I was cutting, and since my man was on me he should get it to me fast. He uncorked a two-handed overhead pass from maybe eight feet away that caught me on the temple as it was rising, and that's the last thing I remember.

I was only out about 15 seconds and still played another shift that night, but every so often Brad likes to remind me that he knocked me out without even punching me.

I'm the one who left the comment that inspired this post,but I got a lot more freak injury stories, but none top the one I posted yesterday.Anyway, when I was about 16 or 17, the other team had a fastbreak and I didn't want to give up an easy basket. So when I ran as hard as I could and jumped to block the shot, but the guy pumpfaked and my feet clipped his torso sending me flipping and landing straight on my head. I woke up laying in the grass about 20 feet away from the court. My "caring" friends just dragged my unconscious body off the court, picked up some random dude, and kept playing. I was apparently knocked out for about 20 minutes.

Another story is about one of my friends. He was dominating the guy who was guarding him, the guy got pissed, and pushed my friend from behind when he went up for a lay-up. My friend face cracked into the metal pole that holds up the backboard, knocking out 3 of his his teeth. To this day at the park you can see the indentation left by his two front teeth left on the pole.

Last story is of some random dude who was playing with glasses on. He collides with some other guy going for a loose ball, knocking a lens out of his glasses which sliced his eyelid. He wasn't that hurt by it, and he was at the park like two days later, but its always freaky when you see a substantial amount of blood pour out of someones eye.

My story is about a friend from high school. We were playing in a local competition against the other team from our school so we knew each other well.

Our team was on offense and missed a shot, the rebound went toward the corner of the court near the sideline and baseline.

My friend ran over to grab it but was beaten by a guy on the other team. The guy on the other team then tried to throw a full court pass, but my friend stuck his hand up to block it.

The ball hit his pinkie finger and dislocated it. My friend ran over to the bench where there happened to be a camera filming the game. I didn't see what happened at the game, but when I watched the tape you could see the bone from his finger was sticking through a hole on the palm of his hand.

He ended up getting taken to the hospital by one of the parents of a player on the other team and ended up bleeding all through the interior of the guys car (which was apparantly quite expensive).

In a game this last season, I picked a pass off, which set up a one on one fast break. I got a step on the guy and went up for the lay up when I feel him hit my legs and lift them up. He undercut me, hard, and I came down face first. I got my hands in front of my face, but not quick enough. I broke both of my front teeth and sprained both of my wrists. I felt my teeth break on the fall, so I came off the court with my hand over my mouth, expecting blood. I got to the bench, removed my hand, and it turns out there was no blood. However, I then coughed and ended up with one of my teeth in my hand. I handed it to my coach and went back and attempted to shoot free throws. I was so pumped with adrenaline I ended up bricking them both off the back rim though. I also had to pick slivers of tooth out of my mouth for the rest of the game.

When i was trying out for my 8th grade bball team, an opponent came down for a fastbreak, and i being a 5'2 white kid got ready to take a charge. Unfortunately, at that same moment, our star player, a 6'0 freak athlete named Xavier tried to block the layup and upon landing bit into the top of my head. He chipped his tooth and I had a gaping cut on the roof of my head. I tried to keep playing, but ended up being forced to leave the court, and I nearly started crying for fear of getting cut form the team.

Not that this compares in terms of pain, but it's a wierd injury---One time i went up for a finish, got hip checked, and landed straight on my elbow. I have "displaced ulnar nerve", which means that my elbow nerve is in the wrong place...which isn't a big deal...as long as you don't fall on it

As a result, i couldn't feel my pinky or ring finger for about 4 days. Pins and needles, tingling all the time, couldn't feel a THING. It was bizzare.

I was playing ball at our university's main indoor gym when the opposing team dumped the ball into the low post. I was in help position so I swarmed in to double and got a good grip on the ball with my right hand. I started yanking the ball away from the guy and felt it coming loose, once i realized that I started to take off thinking the steal was as good as mine. Unfortunately the guy clamped down on the ball and ripped it back. By now my hand was firmly gripped around the ball as well, so instead of my hand slipping off the ball the guy yanked my shoulder out of the socket.

I don't know which was worse: the pain of having my arm being ripped out of the socket or the 30 minutes i was bouncing around the back of the ambulance only to wait another 30 agonizing minutes for a doctor to see me.

I had a compound fracture in my right index finger once playing ball and later had to get 3 pins surgically drilled through the finger to hold it together and the pain from that wasn't nearly as bad as my dislocated shoulder.

Interestingly enough, when the doctor finally saw me he didn't actually put my arm back into the socket himself, he showed me how to do it in the event i dislocated the shoulder again. He was also teaching some med-school students this method as well. Since then I have had to use his method about 1/2 a dozen times to put my arm back in the socket.

This happened twice. Sixth grade we had recess and would play basketball (but not on a rim, we had no goal, its weird) and the ball went flying after a shot. A classmate and I chased it and both reached down to get it. He got it and rose up. His head hit my jaw forcing my front left tooth into my lip. Blood everywhere blah blah nurse yada yada. No stitches required. A few years later it happened again at a summer camp. The defender just rushed me while I had the ball and gave me an uppercut. Same tooth into same spot as two years before, only one difference. I had braces now. So my bottom lip was stuck to my top tooth. A counselor went to the bathroom with me and she helped me remove my lip, it took about ten minutes, of course I played the second half. They needed the star player.I also fractured my pinkie that summer, but whatever.

@anonymousnupe: I tore my achilles turning to get a pass thrown to me short from down court. I thought someone kicked me too, exactly the same. Then I had to walk around on it for 3 months before I finally got surgery and a cool scar (I didnt have to, I am stubborn at time and procrastinate).

Ugh. Some of these are stomach churning. Mine isn't nearly as horrifying but I might be the only person who picked up a T for getting injured.I started playing ball in 8th grade, played Varsity my Soph-Jun year but was relegated to the JV as a frosh. My only real talent was jumping really high, and running really fast with no particular bball IQ or technical skills. One game I was caught completely out of position in on the wing and as my man drove right past me I attempted to compensate for my poor positioning by sprinting and leaping to block the shot. I caught an elbow to the face, but to my satisfaction blocked the shot. About a second after I landed and my team began the break the ref whistled and I lost it, I thought he was calling a foul on a block I knew was clean. He tried to talk to me but I was way to amped up to be reasoned with. I shouted expletives for about 5 seconds, all the while he was saying "Just go to the sideline"Needless to say I got T'd up, and sent to the sideline where our trainer pushed a towel to my face and handed me a mirror. The elbow that I had taken to the face had apparently done more damage than I'd originally thought, because the liquid dripping in my eye (I'd thought it was sweat) was blood gushing from a gash on my eyebrow. I needed 8 stitches, and got shouted at by my coach for cussing out the ref. Life's a bitch.

"Mine isn't nearly as horrifying but I might be the only person who picked up a T for getting injured."

Except that you picked up the T for your reaction. Gmoney actually got T'd for being hurt:

"When I was in 8th grade, I stood in to take a charge. When I fell, I broke my arm in two spots. I was called for a block and because I was writhing around in pain, the ref thought that I was showing him up so I got T'ed. I guess he couldn't tell the difference between a 14 year old complaining and one that was in obvious pain."

My worst basketball injury occured once I tried throwing an underhanded pass into the paint Jason Williams to Coris Williamson-style. I put to much spin on the pass, and my hand slipped of the ball and straight into my own eye - and mye freaking eyeball started bleeding! I had cut it open with my nail!

It wasn't as bad as it seemed at the time though, and I was surprised how quickly the eye healed. After a week I had regained full vision.

Friend of mine got pushed from behind going up for a layup, ended up undercutting the guy who was going up to block him. The guy flipped forward and crashed into his own teammate, and ended up crushing his trachea on the guy's elbow. My friend however, escapes completely unscathed but rightfully pissed until he saw the guy was on the ground not moving. He had to be carted off to the hospital and he couldn't eat for like a month

Probably the worst is when I was playing 2v2. My roommate was on my team and I set a screen for him. He wasn't totally facing me but I thought he sensed my presence. WRONG. He whips around and bullets the ball one handed right at my face. He nearly broke my nose.

Now I committed a hard foul in Canada this summer. I was playing one on one with a Albertan buddy of mine. He was trying to play some tough defense on me but he kept leaving a huge space between his legs. Naturally I thought I was on the And1 tour and tried to bounce the ball through his legs and roll around him to the hoop. Unfortunately, he kind of read the move but instead of bringing his legs together, he just squatted down a bit. The ball bounced down on the ground then right back into his groin. He immediately dropped a little lower and leaned forward. This was in a split second mind you so I was already started to put all my weight in my shoulder to roll around him. I wound up shouldering the inside part of his arm, right near his arm pit. I hit him so hard he flung backwards a bit.

Yeah...I felt pretty bad. He had a baseball sized bruise on his arm that made him look a recipient of a mugging. Oh..he also was squirming in pain from getting him in the man region.

I've had a few over the years. Had a two-fer during my first university practice session - we'd just started a scrimmage, maybe 2 minutes in. I went in for a layup and got rejected in a most violent way. Started running back up the court, and I hear a whistle. Next thing I know, I'm being pulled out and the coach looks quite concerned. Turns out I'd dislocated both knuckles on my right middle finger, and they were both bent right backwards. I just popped 'em back in and carried on. Strangly enough, on the next possesion I went in for another layup and landed knee-first on the face of the guy who'd blocked me (accidentally). His nose pretty much just burst open...

Worst injury i got was'nt done whilst playing ball but it happened two days before my high school semi final game, i was jogging with my dog and went to jump a log. One problem though. The dog didnt jump so i ended up landing straight on my shoulder completely ruling my self out of the semi final. And being the teams highest scorer for the season made it a big blow, we lost :(

I am going to post this as annonomous because, well, you'll see. It was not a painful injury, but it was very odd. After a game i got home and when i took a shower my penis was completely blue. It was totally bruised. I thought back to the game and remembered when it must have happened. On a drive, i was in the air under the hoop-steve nash style, and a defender elbowed me in the extreme inner thigh, and my piece must have been in between. It still functioned normally but it was not the kind of injuy you brag about to your teammates. I never spoke of it until years later.

Back in college they used to have open gym when the Basketball team wasn't playing. I was going for the steal, and my friend went to do a crossover and my forehead hit his nose, and it shattered. He layed bleeding there for a full minute before we realized what happened. We freaked out and took him to the hospital right away. Other than making me feel incredible guilty, it was pretty routine.

Later I was talking to the captain of the college team, and he was talking about how the team came into practice, and saw a lot of blood, and what seemed like drag marks on their court. They thought someone got stabbed, and had disposed of the body. They cancelled practice that day..

My injury isn't nearly as bad as some of these other ones, it's just kind of embarrassing and sorta funny.

It was the end of my junior year in high school and a couple of friends and I were shooting around to decide teams. For no good reason, I decided to see if I could grab the rim, and to my surprise I got about half of my middle and ring fingers on the rim and was hanging on. I was so happy that I didn't realize that my forward momentum was making me lose my grip, and I landed straight on my ass. I couldn't walk right for about 2-3 weeks, and for the rest of the day I kept having to explain how I'd hurt myself by falling off of the rim.

Almost all the "man parts" stories I have are from baseball, back in the age range before we figured out that cups might be a good idea. The one the sticks out most must have been about age 12. This kid Kyle caught a funny hop from a hard ground ball right up into the jewels. It was like a movie: he froze, tipped over, and then puked. Absofreakinlutely awesome (except to Kyle, of course).

Kyle also had the distinction of being the only person I ever knew who could fart on command. He would do this crazy half somersault position, suck air into his ass (you could hear it), and then fart. He could do this on command, and indefinitely, so I doubt he was just holding it. Truly one of the greatest stupid human tricks I've ever seen.

Well, I played on an outdoor court a few years back (mind you, I'm from Brunei so most courts are surrounded by lush jungle - but nothing hardcore) and was in a full court battle. My team was on D and the opponent's SG missed a shot. Went up for a rebound only to be knocked aside by the opposing centre. Big deal right? Well, the dude got the offensive rebound while standing on my chest since i felled earlier in the play. Went up for the shot and landed again.

Needless to say I got KO'ed by that huge fcker and woke up under a tree about 15 minutes later. They just carried me off the court, huddled around me till i woke up.

About 3 years back i was playing in the grand final for our division. About 20 minutes before our game was due to start myself and 3 other teammates decided to run a very loose scrimage to warm up and start finding our range. 2 of the guys left breifly and made head way towards the toilets, so that left the 2 of us on the court. My larger PF teamate, i play the 1, 2 or 3, suggested a little 1 on 1 while we wait. Now normally i dont play alot of 1on1 but for some reason on this night i thought it would be a good idea.So a couple possesions into our duel my opponent gets a rebound in the middle of the paint and i restrict any easy shot so he turns his back to me to post me up. Now after playing with him for 3 years, much of that feeding him the ball, i know his moves and game pretty well.

He throws a big head fake to his right and is convinced that he sold the fake. But i know too well that if he rolls that way he'll need atleast one dribble in the left hand... aint gonna happen. So i go the otherway and wait for him to come back my direction and smack! Leads through with his coconut head and cracks my nose straight down the middle.

By this stage our final is 5 minutes from starting there is blood everywhere, on me, on my top, on the court. Enter stage left the rest of my team. Needless to say they can't beleive whats going on.

The pain soon disappeared but the blood kept coming. I spent the entire game on the bench waiting for the blood to stop so i could take court but it just didnt happen. To top it off, the game concluded with us losing but 2 points. I still dont know what hurt more.

When I was around 11 years old I played for our local basketball team. I wasn't awesome, but I didn't suck, so I was one of the better players on the second team. During a game I was getting a lot of playing time because we were winning by a lot. I prided myself with hustle, I was one of those kids that would try to save a ball if it was going out of bounds or doing that cheap play where you jump to save a ball and call a timeout. So this hustle would do me in. The gym we were playing in had about 2 feet of out of bounds under the basket (it was a gym built in the 20s and used to be a bomb shelter). So with minimal space they put some mats on the wall in case some ADD kid like me comes along and tries to save a ball. These weren't normal mats, they were supported by wood on the top and bottom. So in the third quarter the ball is going out of bounds, I jump to save it, and one of the screws in the wood holding up the mats goes into my knee. It took a second to register what had happened. I looked down, saw bone and collapsed on the floor. The ref runs over and decides it's a good idea to close the wound, so with his bare hands holds close the bloody wound. I had a similar experience to you when I was taken to the emergency room as I felt all the stitches go into my knee. It didn't ruin any dates, make me eat out of a straw, or limit my communication, but it hurt. And what kind of gym has screws sticking out of wooden planks under a basketball hoop?

I fragmented the growth plate in my knee running into a wall on the baseline a few years ago. I was attempting to contest a fast break layup, and the floor on the baseline was dusty as all hell. Unable to stop, I crashed into the wall with my head and my left knee simultaneously. Ended up with a horrible headache, and unable to do anything more strenuous than walking for six months. My fitness still hasn't recovered.

I know I'm late on this, but it's just about the only time I talk about hy weird basketball injury. I was 19, home from college for the summer, and messing around with a bunch of friends on an outdoor court with a 9 foot hoop. Hoop was old as dirt, one of the kinds that had a chain mesh net, but this one was ragged. (You can tell where this is going?) We were playing 21 with extra credit for dunks, and I came flying in off a miss, grabbed the rim with my left hand, grabbed the ball with my right and hook-dunked a follow. My momentum caused a strand of the net to swing out and catch me in the left nostril just ar I let go of the rim. I felt this ... tug? ... and just sort of knew something was wrong. I touched my nose and it was all blood. I'd sliced the nostril open. Have you ever seen Chinatown? When Jack Nicholson's character has the switchblade stuck up his nose and flicked out? It was just like that. A big, flappy nose-sail.

Blood was everywhere. My friend and I drove to the police station to ask them what they thought. They thought we were really dumb. They called an ambulance and I got sixteen stitches in my nose, some on the inside, and the worst part was that to dull the area they had to stick a needle into the little divot between my nose and mouth. Man, someone sticks a needle there and it tripped some sort of internal sprinkler system and water just began pouring out of my eyes, and the douchebag ER attending said, oh look, he's crying.

I was playin JV ball and this kid on my team was notorious for missing wide open layups. So he has a wide open fastbreak right before halftime (like no one on that side of mid-court), trips over the court monster, and stumbles widely into the tiny alleyway which held the basket support. Also sprained his ankle in the process and missed the next few games.

I was playing pickup ball with my cousin and he was clowning on me because we were both doing Air Alert and he was able to dunk and I was not, (Granted, he had a six week head start on me but whatever.) And so we were playing, and he was throwing down the occasional dunk, when I accidentally slipped on some dirt leaving the lane wide open. My cousin, foolishly laughs at me and goes up for the two handed dunk, sort of in a diagonal shape, however, for some reason (I later found out he hit his fingers on the rim) that he just dropped, and so he fell down on his face. I laughed at him for about five seconds, but I began to see a ton of blood just seep around him. He knelt up, felt his face, (I was still behind him) and heard him scream and run into the house, I glanced at his face to see a horrifying amount of blood flowing from his mouth. But something was bugging me, I turned around to look at where he fell, and saw a pink crescent shaped object on the ground. He had bitten his tongue off when he fell. Needless to say, off to the emergency room, stitches, stayed in the hospital for a couple of days because of the surgery to reconnect and save the tongue nerves. Needless to say, he wasn't dunking much after that incident.

On my team in high school in the early nineties our 2guard was named Troy. He was a sweet natured guy. No hops, decent shooter, pretty good on-the-ball defender. We were playing this squad from across town who had a tiny starting backcourt - they were about 5'3" and fifteen years old and had serious hops. They were also douchebags. We had a strict Knicks-style warzone policy - no layups. Foul on the fast break. Douche #1 gets a steal from Troy, who gives chase. From the key I yell "Foul that mother!" at the top of my lungs. Douche gets his hand to the rim and Troy whacks the arm down and knocks the ball away. Ugly foul. Douche falls to the floor with his arm under him and starts screaming. I start laughing, "Yeah, yeah. Whatever. Foul got called, ya pansy." Turns out his hip pinned his wrist to the floor. He broke it in five places. He never regained his shot and we beat the team in the final after his comeback.

About a year later I was playing for the semi-pro team in our town. I was pretty athletic, and I could dunk from near the foul line about that time. Troy was a practice player for us. On a full court drive he drove the lane and faked me bad. I went up... and up ... and up. My knee hit his shoulder and I cartwheeled over him a full spin and came down with my right deltoid and crown of my head flat on the floor (think of that posture) and my right wrist under my hip. I was in pain everywhere and I was badly winded. I lay writing on the floor holding my arm, unable to scream. All I could think was "Foul that mother!" and the Douche, falling all that way onto his arm. I literally dragged myself to the sideline while someone got me some ice for my arm. Eventually the pain went away and I was able to drive home in an hour. The wrist was badly bruised, my hip was bruised and my knee was banged bad. But after a couple of hours I saw myself in the mirror. My left shoulder was about three inches higher than my right. Pretty soon it began to burn like hellfire. I went to hospital. Turned out I tore a FIVE INCH rip into my trap on the left side.

Two years later I got bad pain in my right shoulder when it got cold. My doc had me x-rayed. "Well," he said. "Looks like you had a fall. Right shoulder?" (Playback: "Foul that mother!") I look at him, "Yeah, a couple of years ago I fell on it. A fair distance. Probably five feet onto hardwood." He puts the x-ray in front of me. I broke my collarbone, too, clean through, out near the shoulder joint. When I raise my arm up it just floats south where ever it likes. There was nothing they could do other than cut me open and wire it in place, which would have taken me off the court for months. That was twelve years ago. It's still like that, just floating free.